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On Feminism, Fate, and Family in the Queens of Fate Series
As I’m writing the third book in my feminist Arthurian retelling series (this one is Queen of Mercy, while the others are Queen of None and Queen of Fury), I’ve been having quite a lot of thoughts about the overall themes and symbols of them. For context: I started the first book in 2009, and now here we are in 2023. Which is about the same difference in time from the end of the first book to the beginning of the third book. In that time, characters who start out as babies become adults (well, in medievalish terms). People die. Alliances are forged, relationships broken. It’s very much a whole…
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Fumbling Towards Camelot – My Arthurian Stories Find a New Home With Solaris Books
Who can say when a story really starts? Out of the mire of post-Roman Britain, the Arthurian Tales rose to prominence across much of Europe: a motley patchwork of stories, characters, and adventures that remain with us today. It is, I suppose, a great, collaborative tapestry, with new authors adding to the scenes for almost 1500 years. Like many young writers, and especially those of the medieval inclination, I fell head over heels for Arthuriana when I was in college. Though I was acquainted with the stories thanks to Disney and Mary Stewart, discovering the age and breadth of these tales absolutely blew my mind. I felt a kinship, especially,…
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The Mother-Hero in Arthurian Fantasy
Day two of the 12 Knights of Queen of None is all about Anna, Motherhood, and reclaiming the narrative.
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Lev Grossman on T.H. White and The Once and Future King
One of the subjects I will go on at length most often is, most assuredly, Arthuriana. My abiding love for that genre started with a gorgeous illustrated volume (an abbreviated Morte D’Arthur) given to me by my great-aunt, but really came to fruition during my Freshman year of college when I was assigned both The Once and Future King and The Mists of Avalon. Previous to this, the only fantasy I’d really read was Tolkien, L’Engle, Alexander, and some Terry Goodkind. And while Mists was very empowering, especially as feminist fantasy, T.H. White’s The Once and Future King changed the entire landscape of how I viewed fantasy storytelling. If I…
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Arthur Re(du)x – Part One
I can’t say for sure, but I think the first time I ever saw something remotely Pre-Raphaelite was in elementary school upon visiting the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA. It very well could have been this painting, though I’m not sure when it was acquired. Regardless, I remember returning from the museum on an absolute high, my mind alive with the images I’d seen and thrilling at the prospect of such visual imagination. Throughout college, I learned a great deal more about the Pre-Raphaelites, and they and their brotherhood (and sisterhood, et al) continued to crop up during my Arthurian studies. And the more I read of Arthur, the…
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The Queen, the Knight, and Arthur
If you’ve followed either of my blogs, listened to my podcast, of likely talked to me for all of ten minutes, you’ve probably gathered that I have a thing for Arthuriana. My love of the genre is deep-seeded, having taken root somewhere in between watching The Sword in the Stone and receiving a book from my great aunt on the subject (I can’t seem to locate the book, but it had fabulous illustrations, including a brilliant one of Morgause holding up Mordred as a newborn amidst the rocky sea and churning waves). But it wasn’t until college that something really clicked with me, something started reverberating in my brain, in…
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The draft of None is done
I was going to save this until tomorrow when, I hope, I’m a little cheerier. But, hey, it’s not every day you finish a book. I mean, writing one. Since the beginning of the year I have implemented a no whining, no complaining, work-only approach to writing. I decided I will no longer sit around watching TV and wait for inspiration to hit me on the head, or to simply “feel like writing”. I’m just writing. Period. Add to that a myriad of stresses family wise, and my inherent ability to escape into writing with the going gets tough, and you make for a rather magic mix (or, as I…
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Judge a book by its title
Having somewhere around four titled works, I often feel like a total newbie. Hell, I feel like a total newbie most of the time with the whole publishing thing. I was once told I could sell anything, and that would help me in life, yet for the life of me I can’t figure out why trying to “sell” my own novel is like getting splinters shoved under my fingernails. Now that you have that image, let me get back to what I was talking about. We toil in the dark, writing our novels and minor opuses. We think we’re doing amazing things, powerful things, and maybe we are. But we’re…
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Play it again, Frodo: why I love a remake
There are too many purists in the world. Too many folks who cling to original books, movies, songs, rallying for the acknowledgement that their beloved version is The Best That Ever Was. Hollywood is “out of ideas”, books are “recycled”. Like this is a bad thing? The thing is, we’re always telling the same story. It might be a different medium, the genders might be switched, the religions and locations different, but from the Dawn of Humanity, we’ve been obsessed with the same stories: stories of love, hate, revenge, honor, sacrifice. And quite often, we get it wrong the first time. And even more often, we get it worse the…
